Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/386

 which have a very long ovipositor, and which belongs to the genus Stylogaster (family Conopsidæ). These swarms hover with rapidly-vibrating wings, at a height of a foot or less from the soil over which the Ecitons are moving, and occasionally one of the flies darts with great quickness towards the ground. I found they were not occupied in transfixing ants, although they have a long needle-shaped proboscis, which suggests that conclusion, but most probably in depositing their eggs in the soft bodies of insects, which the ants were driving away from their hiding-places. These eggs would hatch after the ants had placed their booty in their hive as food for their young. If this supposition be correct, the Stylogaster would offer a case of parasitism of quite a novel kind. Flies of the genus Tachinus exhibit a similar instinct, for they lie in wait near the entrances to bees' nests, and slip their eggs into the food which the deluded bees are in the act of conveying for their young.